Memoir
of the
Countess of Blessington.
Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, was born at Knockbrit, near Clonmel, Tipperary County, Ireland, on the 1st of September, 1789, and was the third daughter of Mr. Edmund Power, who was of respectable family, but broken fortune and reckless habits.
She was married in her fifteenth year to a Captain Farmer, but the marriage was a very unhappy one, and Mrs. Farmer after a time quitted his house. He was killed by falling from a window in the King's Bench prison while in a state of intoxication, and within four months his widow was married to the Earl of Blessington, February, 1818. After exhausting every means of enjoyment in England and Ireland, the Earl and Countess started in September, 1822, on a continental tour which, partly owing to the Earl's property having become considerably encumbered, was prolonged till his death.
At Paris they were joined by Count Alfred D'Orsay, who in 1827 married a daughter of Lord Blessington by his first wife. It was an unhappy marriage, and a sep-
